Pink Floyd
| in June 1968; here they perform in France, the same year]] "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" is a nine-part Pink Floyd composition written by Roger Waters (WP), Richard Wright (WP) and David Gilmour (WP). A tribute to former band member Syd Barrett (WP), the song was first performed on their 1974 French tour, and recorded for their 1975 concept album Wish You Were Here (WP). It was intended to take up one side of an album (like "Atom Heart Mother" and "Echoes"), but was ultimately split into two parts and used to bookend the album, with new material added. And just some thing deleted from Wikipedia, considerably more current: :"David Gilmour's wife Polly Samson announced ''The Endless River ''in July 2014 on Twitter (WP). Details were announced on Pink Floyd's website on 7 July, describing it as comprising "mainly ambient" and instrumental music. " (WP)]] Lyrical themes :And finally, the sort of section one rarely sees on Wikipedia. Sometimes, the majority overrules the authority. Marked by Waters' philosophical lyrics, ''Rolling Stone described Pink Floyd as "purveyors of a distinctively dark vision".George-Warren|2001|p=760 Author Jere O'Neill Surber wrote: "their interests are truth and illusion, life and death, time and space, causality and chance, compassion and indifference."O'Neill Surber|2007|p=192 Waters identified empathy as a central theme in the lyrics of Pink Floyd.Croskery|2007|p=36 Author George Reisch described "Meddle"'s psychedelic opus, "Echoes", as "built around the core idea of genuine communication, sympathy, and collaboration with others."Reisch|2007|p=268 Author Deena Weinstein described Waters as an existentialist, dismissing the unfavourable moniker of "the gloomiest man in rock" as the result of misinterpretation by music critics.Weinstein|2007|pp=81–82 The music press appears to not have considered the possibility of gloom as a consequence of facing all of reality. Disillusionment, absence, and non-being Waters' lyrics to Wish You Were Here"'s "Have a Cigar" portray the lack of sincerity that financial interests give music industry representatives.Fitch|2005|p=133 The song illustrates a dysfunctional dynamic between the band and a record label executive. The exec flatters the group, gloats over their current sales success, believes "Pink" is the name of one of the band members,Detmer|2007|p=77 and refers to them as "boy". After this, the sincerity of more exhortation in the form of social solidarity: "you owe it to the people" is suspect. The tone shifts a little from pure drama to reductio ad absurdum (or perhaps a bad joke), with "we're so happy we can hardly count". Cutting real life observation returns, as the exec patronizingly exhorts them to "pull together as a team" with the idle capitalists. According to author David Detmer, the album's lyrics deal with the "dehumanising aspects of the world of commerce".Detmer|2007|p=75 A situation the artist, trapped within capitalism, must endure to reach their audience. Absence as a lyrical theme is common in the music of Pink Floyd. Examples include the absence of Barrett after 1968, and that of Waters' father, who died during the Second World War. Waters' lyrics also explored unrealised political goals and unsuccessful endeavours. Their film score, ''Obscured by Clouds, dealt with the loss of youthful exuberance that sometimes comes with ageing.O'Neill Surber|2007|p=197 Longtime Pink Floyd album cover designer, Storm Thorgerson, described the lyrics of Wish You Were Here: "The idea of presence withheld, of the ways that people pretend to be present while their minds are really elsewhere, and the devices and motivations employed psychologically by people to suppress the full force of their presence, eventually boiled down to a single theme, absence: The absence of a person, the absence of a feeling."Thorgerson, Storm|year=1978|title=The Work of Hipgnosis – Walk Away Reneé|publisher= A & W|isbn=978-0-89104-105-4|page=148 Thorgerson's design for Wish You Were Here"'s cover included four sides, counting the inner jacket, which represented four absences related to the classical categories of substance: earth, air, fire and water. His ''Dark Side album cover features a beam of white light, representing unity, passing through a prism, which represents society. The resulting refracted beam of coloured light symbolises unity diffracted, leaving an absence of unity.Weinstein|2007|p=86 Absence is a key element in the existentialism of Albert Camus (WP), who defined absurdity as the absence of a response to the individual's need for unity.Weinstein|2007|p=86 Waters commented: "it's about none of us really being there ... it should have been called Wish We Were Here".Weinstein|2007|p=90 O'Neill Surber explored the lyrics of Pink Floyd and declared the issue of non-being a common theme in their music.O'Neill Surber|2007|p=192 Philosophy originated from the Greek poet, Parmenides, who wrote a poem in which the protagonist takes a cosmic chariot ride guided by a goddess who shows him that there are only two paths in life, being, which leads to truth, and non-being, which leads to confusion and discontent. The goddess also told Parmenides: "thought and being are one".O'Neill Surber|2007|p=191 Waters invoked non-being or non-existence in The Wall, with the lyrics to "Comfortably Numb": "I caught a fleeting glimpse, out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look, but it was gone, I cannot put my finger on it now, the child is grown, the dream is gone."O'Neill Surber|2007|p=197 Barrett referred to non-being in his final contribution to the band's catalogue, "Jugband Blues": "I'm most obliged to you for making it clear that I'm not here."O'Neill Surber|2007|p=197 Exploitation and oppression Author Patrick Croskery described Animals as a unique blend of the "powerful sounds and suggestive themes" of Dark Side with The Wall"'s portrayal of artistic alienation.Croskery|2007|p=35 He drew a parallel between the album's political themes and that of Orwell's ''Animal Farm.Croskery|2007|p=35 Animals begins with a thought experiment, which asks: "If you didn't care what happened to me. And I didn't care for you", then develops a beast fable based on anthropomorphised characters using music to reflect the individual states of mind of each. The lyrics ultimately paint a picture of dystopia (WP), the inevitable result of a world devoid of empathy and compassion, answering the question posed in the opening lines.Croskery|2007|pp=35–36 The album's characters include the "Dogs", representing the force that moves and supports capitalism, the "Pigs", symbolising political corruption, and the "Sheep", who represent the exploited.Croskery|2007|pp=37–40 Croskery described the "Sheep" as being in a "state of delusion created by a misleading cultural identity", a false consciousness.Croskery|2007|p=40 The "Dog", in his pursuit of self-interest and success, with no real autonomy and few rewards from his master, ends up alone with no one to trust, after a life of exploitation.Croskery|2007|pp=37–38 Waters used Wikipedia:Mary Whitehouse as an example of a "Pig"; being someone who in his estimation, used the power of the government to impose her values on society.Croskery|2007|p=39 At the album's conclusion, Waters returns to empathy with the lyrical statement: "You know that I care what happens to you / And I know that you care for me too / Every fool knows / A dog needs a home / And shelter / From pigs on the wing"Croskery|2007|p=41 Sad to say, the "Pigs on the wing" are a continuing threat, and Waters considers that perhaps even he is a "Dog" who requires shelter.Croskery|2007|pp=41–42 Alienation, war, and insanity :"When I say, 'I'll see you on the dark side of the moon' ...; what I mean is;... If you feel that you're the only one;... that you seem crazy because you think everything is crazy, you're not alone."Waters, quoted in Harris, 2005 O'Neill Surber compared the lyrics of ''Dark Side of the Moon"'s "Brain Damage" with Karl Marx's theory of self-alienation; "there's someone in my head, but it's not me."O'Neill Surber|2007|p=195 Marx considered insanity the ultimate form of self-alienation.O'Neill Surber|2007|p=195 The lyrics to ''Wish You Were Here'"'s "Welcome to the Machine" suggest what Marx called the alienation of the thing; the song's protagonist preoccupied with material possessions to the point that he becomes estranged from himself and others.O'Neill Surber|2007|p=195 Allusions to the alienation of man's species being can be found in ''Animals; the "Dog" reduced, by their complicity in the crimes of their masters, to living instinctively as a non-human.O'Neill Surber|2007|p=196 The "Dogs" become alienated from themselves to the extent that they justify their lack of integrity as a "necessary and defensible" position in "a cutthroat world with no room for empathy or moral principle" wrote Detmer.Detmer|2007|p=73 Alienation from others is a consistent theme in the lyrics of Pink Floyd, and it is a core element of The Wall.O'Neill Surber|2007|p=195 War, viewed as the most severe consequence of the manifestation of alienation from others, is also a core element of The Wall, and a recurring theme in the band's music.O'Neill Surber|2007|pp=195–196 Waters' father died in combat during the Second World War, and his lyrics often alluded to the cost of war, including those from "Corporal Clegg" (1968), "Free Four" (1972), "Us and Them" (1973), "When the Tigers Broke Free" and "The Fletcher Memorial Home" from The Final Cut (1983), an album dedicated to his late father and subtitled A Requiem for the Postwar Dream.Blake|2008|p=294: The Final Cut dedicated to Waters' late father; George-Warren|2001|p=761: A Requiem for the Postwar Dream. The themes and composition of The Wall express Waters' upbringing in an English society depleted of men after the Second World War, a condition that negatively affected his personal relationships with women.Blake|2008|pp=294–295: The influence of WWII on The Wall, 351: An English society depleted of men after WWII Waters' lyrics to The Dark Side of the Moon dealt with the pressures of modern life and how those pressures can sometimes cause insanity.Blake|2008|pp=194–195 He viewed the album's explication of mental illness as illuminating a universal condition.Weinstein|2007|p=85 However, Waters also wanted the album to communicate positivity, calling it "an exhortation ... to embrace the positive and reject the negative."Harris|2005|p=81 Reisch described The Wall as "less about the experience of madness than the habits, institutions, and social structures that create or cause madness."Reisch|2007|p=257 The Wall"'s protagonist, Pink, is unable to deal with the circumstances of his life, and overcome by feelings of guilt, slowly closes himself off from the outside world inside a barrier of his own making. After he completes his estrangement from the world, Pink realises that he is "crazy, over the rainbow".Reisch|2007|p=263 He then considers the possibility that his condition may be his own fault: "have I been guilty all this time?"Reisch|2007|p=263 Realising his greatest fear, Pink believes that he has let everyone down, his overbearing mother wisely choosing to smother him, the teachers rightly criticising his poetic aspirations, and his wife justified in leaving him. He then stands trial for "showing feelings of an almost human nature", further exacerbating his alienation of species being.Reisch|2007|pp=263–264 As with the writings of philosopher Wikipedia:Michel Foucault, Waters' lyrics suggest Pink's insanity is a product of modern life, the elements of which, "custom, codependancies, and psychopathologies", contribute to his angst, according to Reisch.Reisch|2007|pp=258–264 Animals Deserves its own section. Dogs: "Everything's done, under the sun / And you believe, at heart, everyone's a killer" Encapsulates, in two lines, the core belief that maintains the villain's simultaneous belief that what they do is wrong, and that what they do is justified. There is no right; it's all a fake. This is the concept behind "performative" good works: hide the fact that they do good, and it is advantageous for do-gooders to derive satisfaction from doing them, behind a supposed imperative to have completely unselfish motives. Because you aren't 100% a saint, we're the same, really. And that justifies any sin.(We're) Not So Different - TV Tropes Concerts While the Floyd were famous for their extravagant stage shows, their base on the "other side of the pond from where the cool kids were" meant they did not hit any instantly recognizable venues until the Isle of Wight Festival (WP), 1970. But then, there's Hyde Park. And Pompeii. And early use of laser shows. And crashing an airplane into the stage during "On the Run". Speaking of which, Wikipedia says On the Run "deals with the pressures of travel, which, according to Richard Wright, would often bring fear of death." Well, sure, maybe to start. But keep an eye out for musicians in interviews saying things that cannot possibly be true, just because they get completely sick of interviewers asking stupid questions, or when they simply want to spice it up a little. This would seem to be one of those occasions. A third of The Wall is about WWII, and they crash a warplane into the stage during the song. It is about war. = Links = * The Wall movie playlist; missing part 1 and 7 of 11 See also * Hipgnosis (WP) * Isle of Wight (WP) * Kralingen (WP) * The Wall (WP) References Sources * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Category:Pink Floyd Category:1995 disestablishments in the United Kingdom Category:1965 establishments in the United Kingdom Category:Musical groups established in 1965 Category:Musical groups disestablished in 1995 Category:British rhythm and blues boom musicians Category:English psychedelic rock music groups Category:English progressive rock groups Category:Art rock musical groups Category:Space rock musical groups Category:Experimental rock groups Category:Capitol Records artists Category:Columbia Records artists Category:Harvest Records artists Category:Parlophone artists Category:Proto-prog musicians Category:Musical groups from London Category:Echo (music award) winners Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Nick Mason Category:Roger Waters Category:Richard Wright (musician) Category:Syd Barrett Category:David Gilmour Category:Juno Award for International Album of the Year winners Category:Music Category:Musicians